About “Get Ur Freak On”

“For those of you who hated,” Missy taunted at the beginning of “Lick Shots”, “you only made us more creative.” By that standard, the song that followed it on Miss E… So Addictive must’ve meant that her and Timbaland were the most-loathed artists of 2001. Eight years after it hit the top ten of Billboard’s Hot 100, “Get Ur Freak On” still sounds like an audaciously leftfield stroke of genius, a song that succeeded wildly in its goal to push futurism, global style, and flat-out hyper-manic absurdity to equally lofty heights. Timbaland’s flair for the accessibly exotic reached its peak here with his bhangra-meets-jungle beat and 50s B-movie sci-fi synths, replacing the stagger-step trap breaks of drum'n'bass with a burbling tabla and subsequently creating a uniquely slippery dance track that bumps hard without a single kick drum.